It is not that I am lazy, but I do like some personal attention. I love cookbooks that include not only recipes but entire menu ideas. Or cookbooks that take you through the seasons and offer you surprises with just about every page turn.
If I say “fruit” you may have an image of an apple ready to tackle with your teeth. Or a bowl of berries, dotted with sugar and cream. Beyond those instinctive images, though, there is enormous potential for fruit: raw, in desserts, but also in our salads and sides and main dishes.
Fruitful: Four Season of Fresh Fruit Recipes is just the dandy guide you need to show you the full potential of fruit. It’s a book to keep out on the kitchen counter, or to carry along to the farmers’ market. You can shop for what is fresh and use Fruitful to give you ideas, both sweet and savory, to unlock the great potential that fresh fruit offers.
Author Brian Nicholson is a third generation famer and works the family business, Red Jacket Orchards. The farm is in the Finger Lake of New York State, but the fresh fruits and berries and bottles of juice appear at farmers markets across New York City. When Suzi and I go to the Saturday market in Tribeca, the first stall has to be Red Jacket.
Coauthor Sarah Huck has worked the farmers markets for Red Jacket and is an accomplished author. She and her husband do not live in the Finger Lake. She’s in Brooklyn running the Kos Kaffe micro coffee roasting establishment. I suspect she is the guiding force behind so many of the delightful recipes you will find in Fruitful.
The core of Fruitful is the four chapters devoted to different times, not quite seasons, of the year. Each chapter has sections for the fruits and berries that peak in those seasons. You’ll find recipes for both sweet and savory, old ideas like cherry pie in new dress and new ideas to fascinate and surprise.
Here’s a rundown of the chapters with sample and delicious recipes, one for each fruit or berry featured for that time of year:
Spring and Early Summer:
Spicy Roast Chicken with Rhubarb Chutney
Strawberry Olive Oil Cake
Freekeh Salad with Red Currants, Arugula, Golden Beets, and Feta
Pan-Seared Duck Breast with Honeyed Gooseberries
Grilled Skirt Steak with Blackberry-Serrano Glaze
Scallop and Blueberry Ceviche
High Summer:
Tender Greens with Raspberries, Pistachios, and Chive Blossoms
Smoked Duck and Cherry Confit Toasts
Charred Pork Chops with Apricot-Rosemary Sauce
Peach-Bourbon Gelato with Praline Swirl
Slow-Baked Salmon with Plum, Cucumber and Mint Salad
Autumn:
Spiced Apple Chestnut Soup
Asian Pear Martini
Peppery Chicken Thighs with Brandy-Roasted Grapes
Buckwheat-Quince Pancakes with Spiced Quince Syrup
Putting Up for Winter is the fourth chapter and gives you ideas for preserving those fresh flavors from earlier seasons. You’ll use these recipe throughout the year:
Quick Strawberry Jam
Boozy Bourbon Peach Jam
Peach-Vanilla Butter
Pickled Seckel Pears
Homemade Crème de Cassis
Apricot Margarita
Fruitful is a wonderful, year-round guide to enjoying fruits and berries. Besides the recipes themselves, there are great background pieces on the different fruits and tabular guides to different varieties of apple, plums and other fruits. This is your one-stop fruit and berry book, a guide from experts for all of us who love these foods. Do any of us eat enough fruit daily? Okay, with Fruitful, you can. And it won’t be just apple pie anymore!